In light of the move by Belinda Stronach to cross the floor and sit with the government, it is interesting to look more closely at the cracks appearing in the Conservative Party. [Update: Links added]
Update: For those who not know what Belinda looks like, here's a shot from Greg Locke's blog. Greg shot Belinda on several occasions for different publications and I wish he'd create a page of the shots. Notice the guy to the right in this one.
The Lampoon this morning caused Connie hearts to skip a beat with the possibility that Doyle and Hearn might cave under political pressure and vote for the budget.
Update II: Don't count on it. Loyola is doing the usual talking points on CBC Radio, calling the prime minister's comments "down-right lies". I'll leave it to you to judge who is saying things that aren't true. Loyola knows full well that if the government is defeated before any bill gets to the Royal Assent stage - stand-alone or budget - the offshore bill won't get passed and no money flows to the province until a bill is passed.
Update III: The Conservative House Leader is confident all his members will vote against the budget bill(s). The local boys are just being cagey.
Original post resumes: Now the woman reputedly involved romantically with the Connie deputy leader has abandoned the good ship Connie-pop. This cannot be good for Peter MacKay DDS, on any level.
The likely response of the Harperites (the Reformers in the party) will be to look more closely at the former Progressive Conservatives in their midst. Every word will be dissected for signs of disloyalty. There will be no room for dissent.
Therefore, the impact of Stronach's departure from the Connie ranks will be determined solely by the Connie/Harper response.
Criticize her as a self-interested whore - to use a popular Connie phrase - and, well, predictably her stock will go up and the Harper stock will, at least, not rise. Magnanimity is a sign of a leader. Meanspirited vindictiveness looks like the mark of a very small individual.
If the Connies pull the reigns tighter, then dissident members may well decide to join Belinda, not because they want to but because they are not being welcomed.
The situation for local Connies Doyle and Hearn just got much worse.
As national caucus chairman, the Harperites will be looking to Doyle to toe the line; he will need to be more zealously anti-Liberal than ever before. He cannot vote with the government on the budget without risking being pushed from caucus.
For Hearn, one of the architects of the Unite the Right experiment, the situation is equally dark. To buck the Harperites invites sanction. He has nowhere else to go. To buck the Harperites and open the division suggests that maybe his earlier action on bringing MacKay and Harper together was a mistake.
Politically, they cannot vote against their party and expect to move forward in glory as future Connie cabinet ministers.
Politically, they cannot buck the party line and expect to get re-elected. Over 13, 000 e-mails in a three day span and countless hours of Open Line and other media scrutiny is obviously causing the pair great difficulty.
Having insisted they are voting to bring down the government, they cannot suddenly switch positions and vote for the budget without damaging their credibility. The fact that Hearn and Doyle can argue any side of anything at any time really doesn't endear them to their constituents beyond the hard-core of the local Connie team.
If Hearn suddenly switches his vote - for the third time by my count, we have yet one more example of where Hearn said something emphatically that turned out not to be true.
Politics is always an entertaining sport to watch or to play.
Today's' events prove that to a tee.
